Building your own computer is not only rewarding but it gives you many more options with regards to future upgrades. The best thing about building your own computer is also that it's not as difficult as people may think. (more)

Once you've built your computer you may want to improve or expand it using expansion cards such as graphics cards, WiFi cards, controller cards, etc. they are super simple to fit and in this guide I'll show you how. (more)

BLOG 2: Tom continues his adventures in the world of The Cloud. For those who have not come across the Transporter before, it is quite simply an ingenious NAS device that emulates services such as Microsoft's SkyDrive and the ever popular Dropbox. (more)

Thailand's worst flooding in decades is set to last at least another month according to reports from the country's prime minister, yet the repercussions for the UK IT channel could last much, much longer. (more)

You don't need to look very hard to see that solid state hard drives are popping up everywhere now... (more)

Hard Drives by Intel

A hard drive is one of the key components of a modern computer. The hard drive is where all of your programs and files are stored.

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Hard Drive Beginners Guide

What is a hard drive? A hard drive is one of the key components of a modern computer. The hard drive is where all of your programs and files are stored. How does a hard drive work? A traditional hard drive uses similar technology to cassette and VHS to store your data. Inside the hard drive there are several delicate metallic platters. Just as a head inside of a cassette or VHS player reads the data on a tape there is a head inside of the hard drive that moves over the platters reading and writing data. When you turn on your computer the platters immediately begin to spin up to speed. The platters in a modern hard drive will spin between 5400rpm and 7200rpm, you may be able to hear a slight hum from your PC when your fan is not running and this will be the sound of your hard drive. When your computer is on but you are not accessing the drive the platters will continue to spin. The arm with the heads on it (called the actuator) will only move when you read or write data to the drive. What is Average Seek Time? In order to read or write data in a particular place on the disk, the actuator arm with the read/write head of the disk needs to be moved into the correct place. This process is known as seeking and the time it takes a drive to get the head into the correct place is the seek time. Seek time can vary depending on the starting point on a drive, the head may have to move 10% across the platter or 80% across the surface of the platter and both will give different seek times. This is why the measurement is taken as an average seek time to allow for comparisons to be made between drives. Solid State Drives (SSDs) do not have what we normally define as seek time because they do not feature any moving parts. There is however a delay from the hardware signal from the other components in the system which is described as seek time normally of 0.1ms or below....